Taiwan’s environment and land restoration under serious threat

When the public are focusing on Chen Shui-bian’s trial and the new Premier, something detrimental to Taiwan’s environment is going on. It may just prove that Ma Ying-jeou’s promise to place land restoration and flood prevention first and start necessary policy revisions was empty.

Frank Hsieh, the former Kaohsiung Mayor, also shared his views both on his radio show and on Plurk. Under the government plan, the ban is going to be lifted on 12 reserves, three of which are in the Kaohsiung area. Those areas are still recovering from decades of damage. The Hsieh administration in Kaohsiung City made a lot of effort in restoring Takao Hill and Half Screen (Ban Ping) Mountain. They did not only encounter resistance from local residents and illegal occupants but also blackmails and serious threats. The then Deputy Mayor, Lin Yung-chien, and his team were even physically assaulted on one of their visits to the area.

Several years ago, torrential rain caused floods and mudslides at Mt. Half Screen. If Hsieh’s administration had not built three detention basins around Mt. Half Screen, the villages underneath were very likely to have been seriously flooded or washed away. After a lot of negotiations and hard work, things started moving towards a more positive direction and those areas look very different and much more pleasant now. Why take it away?

Critics also warned of a grim possibility. Under the government administrative structure, it is not possible for a premier to stop a policy already officially approved and announced within 24 hours. He would have to go through a set of procedures to formally abandon the plan. This raises the question of whether Wu was only saying it to avoid public criticisms when in fact the policy is still valid. If the Ma administration was sincere in land restoration and flood prevention, they could have started taking necessary steps to stop and review the lift of this ban weeks ago. Instead, they let it go on.

The more important question should be why the KMT administration is lifting the ban in the first place. Well, one of the sectors that strongly opposed the DPP administration’s land restoration proposal was the cement industry, which uses limestone as one of the raw materials and are looking to benefit if the government lifts the ban. Commentators on Talking Show also questioned whether the cement industry supported and donated to Ma’s campaign during the 2008 presidential election so that the Ma administration was now returning the favour even if that meant destroying the environment and making Taiwan more vulnerable to floods and mudslides.

These allegations are either untrue or exaggerated. The DPP did take into account of residents’ financial, educational, medial and employment needs and they were willing to communicate and adapt to the various cultures and preferences. Those KMT party lines could be true but also sounded like excuses to cover what they were really trying to protect, for example, the interests of the cement industry or farmers, perhaps?

Even if the DPP proposal was not that great, the KMT is far from considerate to the flood victims and the Aborigines. Without properly consulting those Aboriginal flood victims, the Post-Typhoon Morakot Reconstruction Special Act was drawn up and quickly approved by the Parliament (as the KMT has an overwhelming majority). This special act gives the government the power to “forcibly relocate residents of disaster-prone areas after first seeking their consensus.” This is more arbitrary than whatever was proposed by the DPP. The victims didn’t feel listened to and staged a post against this special act. They asked the government to postpone it and listen to what they have to say. The Presidential Office sent someone quite junior in the Public Affairs Department to meet with the protesters and he/she only promised to pass on the message to the president. To avoid the press, the representatives were taken to the canteen in the Presidential Office rather than the reception room. What annoyed the protesters even further was that the Presidential Office worker told them that the Presidential Office usually gave visitors water but gave them packaged drinks, which was already ‘pretty good’. What that person didn’t say out loud was probably ‘so you should be grateful…’

While it is natural that a lot of people would want things back to the way they used to be and resist the idea of change until they find something acceptable, the KMT’s behaviours towards dealing with such feelings and actual concerns are different before and when they are in charge. When the DPP was in charge, the KMT used (to some extent, I guess ‘stirred’) Aboriginal residents’ and farmers’ concerns and feelings against the DPP to score points. Now they are in charge. They seem to be able to easily brush those people’s concerns aside. The special act and the way the Ma administration responds to the victims show that their thinking centres around what’s easy for them to manage rather than user oriented strategies. This also makes one wonder how serious or sincere the KMT and Ma Ying-jeou himself about their promises on land restoration. What they say and what they actually do are likely to be completely different. The ‘brick wall’ may always be there for those who truly want to and endeavour to protect the environment with the concept of sustainable development in mind. The ‘wall’ would just manifest itself in different forms, depending on what suits the KMT and Ma Ying-jeou.

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“The Presidential Office sent someone quite junior in the Public Affairs Department to meet with the protesters and he/she only promised to pass on the message to the president. To avoid the press, the representatives were taken to the canteen in the Presidential Office rather than the reception room.”

I can smell discrimination from the treatment given by the presidential office to the aboriginal protesters by the above description.

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Taiwan, also known as Formosa, is NOT part of China. The majority of the population see themselves as Taiwanese, NOT Chinese. Taiwan is a democracy and therefore people there do not wish to be ruled by China, a dictatorship with poor human rights record and about 2,000 missiles aiming at Taiwan.